Each VM should be able to connect to the Internet (this is needed primarily to install software)
My Host browser should be able to connect to the Guest VMs. Also I need to be able to ssh to the Guest VMs.
This is why I want each VM to have a static IP address.
This will also allow the VMs to connect to each other, say for database connectivity.

I have done this with VMware Fusion. However, VMware has lately bitten me too often and destroyed so much work that I want to try VirtualBox.

But I'm not a network guru and don't know which type of networking I want. So what I'm asking is simple:

Which type of networking should I use? NAT, bridging, or what?

And of course if anyone has a link to any documentation of how to do what I want, that would be greatly appreciated.

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2 Answers
2

NAT - Your host will act as a router (firewall) and your hosts will be on a private subnet. Use this if you are not running servers on the guests.

Bridged - Your guests will get a ip address on the same subnet as your host. Use this if you are running servers on the guest and wish to connect from other computers on the LAN.

Host Only - Sort of a hybrid. As the name implies, with this option you can connect to the guest servers from the host only. Use this for "private" (host only) servers. I use this if I am running a test web server.

To make a long story short, assuming you have a router, I would use bridged networking.

NAT is Network Address Translation - this is a VM-internet connection, as opposed to Bridged Networking, which is (from the network point of view) the same thing as having a physical machine connected - as such, with Bridged networking, you can have it be both ways - your VM gets an IP address, which can then be used for SSH, telnet etc.